


come on now, follow my lead

by londongrammar



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, a very tiny little bit of smut but a LOT of fluff, montreal and toronto and hamilton and everything in between, scott moir feelings hour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 18:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14574996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/londongrammar/pseuds/londongrammar
Summary: The tour kicks off in Halifax, andShape of Youis clearly the highlight of his night. He’s been given the freedom to flirt with Tessa in an imaginary bar, run his hand up her thigh to her waist, press up against her lightly and tell her he’s in love with her body, and no-one is going to bat an eyelash. He’s got this under control. It’s all good.Three shows in, it has completely run away from him.*or Tessa, Scott, three shows and one fake proposal.





	come on now, follow my lead

**Author's Note:**

> I had to.
> 
> There are a few tidbits here that refer to my previous stories about V/M in Stars on Ice, but everything should make sense even if you haven't read them.
> 
> title is from eduardo sheeran's magnum opus, the unexpected mvp that has haunted our dreams for the past two weeks.

It begins in Montreal.

 

He gets too comfortable being on home turf, and getting _too comfortable_ is exactly what leads to mistakes.

 

He spends all of Monday staying in with Tessa. Staying in means they’re in bed all day, eating candy, catching up on Colbert and having a debate on whether Kaitlyn and Andrew are in a fight; the facts are that Andrew didn’t tell Kaitlyn about the rehearsal schedule change a few days ago, and that, aside from a group picture in Ottawa, Kaitlyn hasn’t posted a picture of him on Instagram for over six days, which has to be a personal record.

 

Really, Scott will discuss any topic with Tessa, and keep it light and breezy to make sure she doesn’t get stuck in some kind of weird guilt trip about falling the night before in Ottawa. They talked about it at length after the show, but she’s so quick to put blame on herself for these things, and even through years and years of therapy she hasn’t been able to completely shake the insidious fear that one day her legs might just _stop working_.

 

So she stays in his arms and they have a quiet day, until she puts her hands on him, and the day gets decidedly louder. It should probably alarm him that she gets in the mood right after watching Rachel Weisz tell Stephen and the audience that she is pregnant, but he’s too busy going down on her to really think about it.

 

(What’s _really_ alarming is that this whole line of thinking doesn’t actually alarm him at all.)

 

Tuesday is when they double down on business. He spends time at Gadbois, causing a few teens to practically have a conniption when he offers to skate with them. Tessa joins him at the rink after attending a business meeting, and they have lunch with Marie-France and Patch, relating stories from the first few shows of the tour and describing their rather disastrous dinner with Jeff in Halifax.

 

Billie is going through a phase of being totally enamoured with Scott, and she spends most of lunch close to him, demanding his attention and laughing at the funny faces he makes for her sake. After they’re finished eating, he takes the ice with her, and she giggles, kicking her little feet around as she spins up high in his arms. From the corner of his eye he can see Tessa looking intently at them, exhaling softly, a warm smile on her face. Their own practice begins shortly afterwards, and they have an amazing session, everything in perfect sync, while Marie-France offers praise from the boards.

 

“La complicité qui vous unit, c’ést plus belle que jamais,” she tells Scott as he takes off his skates and laces up his sneakers at the end of the day. Tessa is hugging Billie goodbye, a good few feet away.

 

“Tu penses ça?” he asks, because her approval, on any level, has always meant the world to him.

 

Marie-France just squeezes his hand, and smiles when she says, in English this time, “Tour is good for you, keep it up.”

 

By the time they go back home, it’s dark. Scott opens the door and reaches for the light switch, when he feels Tessa’s hand stop him. He turns around, and she guides him through the apartment, the city lights coming in from the half-drawn curtains and showing him the unhurried desire in her eyes.

 

They take their time with each other, kissing slowly at the doorway of their bedroom, as if this is a first date and he’s dropping her off on her front step, hoping to be invited inside. It’s a warm, quiet night and he’s gonna take it as slow as he can possibly will himself to go.

 

They end up on the bed, and he puts his mouth on her, bringing her close to the edge and backing down when he feels her hips getting out of control. He does it again and again, placing a hand over her stomach to hold her down and she moans his name, so far gone that she almost rips out his hair with the way she’s hanging on to him, trying to create friction. She pleads and begs, and when he hears her breath speed up just like he wants it to, he finally relents, coaxing out her orgasm with his tongue and two fingers curling inside her. She comes with a shout, but he stays where he is, working her, drawing it out, until he feels her start to shake all over again. He sits up quickly, pushing inside her and feeling her walls, still clenching around him.

 

She pulls him down to her and holds on to his arms as they move together, and even though the room is dark, her eyes are shining.

 

*

 

It all backfires spectacularly on him during the Wednesday night show. All this intimacy has gotten to his head, and hers too apparently, and he is _telling_ himself to get into the mindset of a show with an audience, but his brain just isn’t cooperating.

 

And it’s all because of that _stupid song_.

 

He started out hating it, performing Jeff’s choreography while trying to shake the season of horrors that it brought. _Come on be my baby come on_ , went the song, and he would agonizingly try to banish the memory of Gabi having to break down a lift into six different steps before she could manage to stand on Guillaume’s thighs for a whooping _two seconds_. And then came the war flashbacks to the unpracticed, unsynchronized twizzles that gave him a shuddering chill but gave the ISU the kind of hard-on that resulted in consecutive world records.

 

 _You’re being ridiculous_ , Tessa would say, giggling, whenever he recoiled at the opening notes of the song. And he knew he had to get over it somehow, so after Japan he added the song to his workout playlist and figured that if he was gonna finally warm up to it, he would have to start over and associate it with something he liked thinking about.

 

That something is Tessa in their bed, and as they run through the choreography in practice before the tour, he finds he likes the song more and more. The tour kicks off in Halifax, and, aside from the thunderous standing ovation they get before _You Rock My World_ , _Shape of You_ is clearly the highlight of his night. He’s been given the freedom to flirt with Tessa in an imaginary bar, run his hand up her thigh to her waist, press up against her lightly and tell her he’s in love with her body, and no-one is going to bat an eyelash. He’s got this under control. It’s all good.

 

Three shows in, it has completely run away from him.

 

He went right past hate and straight into lust, and once he starts feeling the song’s vibe and combining it with the energy Tessa gives off with her heated smiles, he finds it extremely difficult to hold back. During the chorus, he presses up against her and control goes out the window when she leans back seductively and her hand covers his as it inches upwards. He hunches his entire upper body towards her, and for a brief second he’s got her just how he _knows_ she likes it. He runs his lips just over her shoulder, and the low sound he hears her make tells him they have to shut it down before they _really_ embarrass themselves.

 

He can’t stop thinking about that _sound_ , though. He’s sitting on the stool, waiting for Eric and Meagan to finish their run, and Tessa comes around to stand by his side, placing her hand on his shoulder. He needs to touch her, but her waist is too far away, and that’s not where he wants to be anyway. He drops his hand low, finds the spot behind her knee and runs his fingers over it. Right away he feels her legs widening, and _of course_ they do because that’s muscle memory for you.

 

(And she always welcomes this kind of touch unless it’s one of _those_ days where she makes him work for it, and he begs with everything he’s got to coax her open, and every bit of pleading is worth it in the end.)

 

Her knee bends towards him, and he touches her more intently now, from her calf to the back of her thigh and back down. He fights to ground himself as she sits in front of him and they start the next part of the routine, reaching the end without any more incidents.

 

“Was that too much back there?” he asks her as they enter the tunnel. She is still humming the lyrics under her breath.

 

“Let’s just say, I don’t mind it,” she says, her eyes crinkling with excitement. “Do you?”

 

He hates this song.

 

(He _loves_ this song.)

 

*

 

There have been many times in his life when he’s wished time machines were real, so he could go back in time and do things that needed to be done.

 

If he had a time machine, he would go back to 2006 and tell Patch and Marie France to hold their heads up high, because this isn’t the end, it’s their beginning, and in their future awaits a lot of kissing and a lot of crying and a little girl that shines brighter than the freaking sun. He would go back to 2007 and ask Tanith to agree to that date sooner, because Charlie is going to pine away in his ear for a year and a half, and she should consider giving him a chance because in the end they’ll make the cutest married couple he knows. He would go back to 2008 and order his idiot self to grow the fuck up and go visit Tessa at the hospital and make jokes and hold her hand, because she needs him and his indecision will tear her apart.

 

He would go back to 2009 and tell Jess that she should probably stay away from him, because they’re only ever gonna end up hurting each other. He would go back to 2010 and save himself a black eye and a headache for days, because Fedor and Tessa are gonna fizzle out anyway, and he’s gonna end up with _Meryl_ , of all people. He would go back to 2014 and tell Danny that his kid brother is at a bar, for the ninth day straight, running up a tab and writing off everything he ever loved, and he needs _help_ if he’s ever gonna go to therapy and pull himself together, because it’s going to hurt a lot before he finds the strength to fight for his dreams again.

 

He would go back to 2015 and hold Tessa’s hand tighter during that trek on the Great Wall of China, and he’d tell her not to be afraid, because he’s got her now, and he won’t let go.

 

At present though, the time machine would be needed for a much more ridiculous task.

 

He would go back to 2004, in his host family’s living room in Canton, and tell the two teenagers sobbing over Degrassi High and poor Jimmy Brooks ending up in a wheelchair, that fourteen years later they’re gonna be standing in a back hallway of a basketball arena _with_ Jimmy Brooks, and it’s going to be one of the most surreal experiences in their entire lives.

 

Jimmy Brooks is now a worldwide superstar and the ambassador to the Toronto Raptors, and he’s wearing a tracksuit but rocking it like it’s a Chanel three-piece, and he’s been standing here talking to them for ten minutes like he has nothing better to do with his time. He’s saying things like _call me Aubrey_ and _miss Virtue, it’s an honor_ and _bro, your moves are insane_ and by the time Scott realizes that _Drake_ called him _bro_ , he is already going on a tangent about how his team and their team should get together sometime and talk about a “collab” because he’s all about “that homegrown excellence” and they gotta “let the world know”, whatever that means.

 

Scott is fighting really hard to keep his attention on what _Aubrey_ is saying, while discreetly looking around for the hidden cameras because this is definitely a prank show and not real life. The prank show definitely started earlier, when he was invited to the ACC floor, wearing a Raptors jersey with his name on it, working the noise machine to the wild applause of the audience. That was already an experience, but the reason why he _knows_ this is a prank is because while he was doing this whole thing, a) Tessa was by his side, saying _baby, go faster_ under her breath, and b) on his other side stood his personal cheerleader, which happened to be a _fucking mascot_. What solidified this entire conspiracy theory is that as he and Tessa left the floor, one of the Raptors spokespeople accosted them and said, _Drake wants to meet you guys after the game_.

 

And so he finds himself taking a picture of Tessa and _Aubrey_ talking, when _Aubrey_ chuckles at something Tessa is saying and casually pats her arm while looking at her up and down appreciatively. Tessa glances at Scott, and Scott can’t believe he’s about to get territorial over Tessa to throw off Champagne Papi of all people, but he doesn’t have to, because Papi gets the read on their situation in about three seconds, and he immediately backs away with a confident smile.

 

He has to run to the studio for a late-night recording session, he says, and after they take a couple of pictures he bids them goodbye. Tessa and Scott are silent until they board their Uber, at which point they realize that the driver is listening to _God’s Plan,_ and the hysterical laughter that bubbles out of them takes them all the way back to the hotel.

 

*

 

They’re back in the ACC the next day, for the Toronto show, and the beginning of the show is overshadowed by the dismay they all feel at the epic clusterfuck that made hundreds of people miss the first half of the show. The arena managers totally screwed this up, and at intermission the group huddles together, deciding to give the second half everything they’ve got, to make it up to the people that just got in.

 

When he and Tessa stand in the shadows, waiting for the guitar to give them their cue and the red light to shine on them, she looks at him over her shoulder and brings back one of their age-old pre-skate mantras.

 

“Leave it all on the ice,” she says.

 

She’s talking about the emotions they always brought out with their skating, the ones that had nothing to do with technical elements and strict judges. Skating is _life_ for them, and they’ve only ever been able to capture the feeling with each other. He doesn’t expect the audience to get in his head and know the absolute completeness he feels when he moves on the ice with Tessa, but they’re going to try to bring people as close to it as possible, for as long as their bodies can handle it.

 

People ask him and Tessa if they’re actually going to retire with a morose look of mourning on their faces, and he wants to laugh. He’s so excited for the future he can barely contain it. Of course he’ll miss competition, since it was part of him for so long, but the road ahead isn’t foggy and unknown like it used to be. He and Tessa have _so many_ plans, so many more things to do together, and they will, but for now they have four minutes to dance, and they’re going to make the most of it.

 

At the end of the show, he’s skating around with the GoPro firmly in his hand, when Patrick passes by him and it’s time for Tessa to fly towards him. She waves happily and blows a kiss. Her eyes are smiling, and he knows: the wave is for the crowd, but the kiss is for him.

 

He doesn’t even hesitate before he blows the kiss back to her.

 

*

 

The first half of the Hamilton show goes off without a hitch, at least for him and Tessa. Some of the guys suffer falls and they’ll have to do retakes of their programs in the end, but he’s pretty confident that he and Tessa are gonna do just fine.

 

He should have known not to get too cocky, because after intermission, it’s time for the god-forsaken song again, and he is mostly in control of things, when they reach the edge of the rink to do their part of the bridge.

 

And then.

 

Oh no.

 

Oh no no no _nononononononononononononononono_.

 

He did _not_ just put his hand on her pussy.

 

In front of his mother.

 

In front of _her_ mother.

 

In the _broadcast version._

 

The one that will air on TV on _Christmas_.

 

This is not happening.

 

He knows the logical explanation to this. It’s muscle memory, again, and he’s so used to touching there when her back is against his chest, that his hand just automatically _did it_.

 

It only takes him a nanosecond to course-correct and put his hand on her thigh, and he could in all probability pass this off as some kind of miscalculation. He could, but for the fact that he got such an adrenaline rush from the brief contact that his brain’s message to _calm the fuck down_ isn’t getting through to the rest of his body. He squeezes her waist and her thigh as he caresses her, too tight, and when they break apart for the next dance moves he commands himself to get it together.

 

Blessedly, the number ends, and he breathes a sigh of relief, because the worst of it has passed.

 

It has not. Not even close.

 

And really, it isn’t even his fault. It’s _theirs_. First they trusted him with a hi-tech camera and now they’re trusting him with his ultimate nemesis. An instrument of the devil.

 

A _microphone_.

 

The truth is, he never has trouble expressing himself. He can sit and talk at length, one-on-one or to a large audience, with eloquence and nuance, on the most complicated subjects. He knows his shit, he can provide educated takes on intricate issues, and he is always focused on speaking responsibly.

 

It’s just that sometimes he’ll put his foot in his mouth, and _all_ of those times, miraculously, a microphone will be right in front of him.

 

He and Tessa have taken the ice, employed with the task of keeping the audience entertained until the guys are ready to do the retakes necessary for the TV broadcast. It’s going pretty well, as Tessa is relating a funny story from ye olde days, that makes Scott scoff in fake indignation. He takes the mic from Tessa, and as he scours his brain to find the next story that will keep everyone entertained, someone in the audience takes advantage of the silence and yells loudly.

 

“GET MARRIED!”

 

He looks up, surprised. He’s heard so much yelling and so much audience heckling in his life, that it doesn’t bother him, and he’s learned to move right past it. He can pretend he didn’t hear it and start laughing about something else and that’ll be all. But he’s shocked at the girl’s sheer nerve, and the suggestion itself is a shock to his system.

 

And so he makes a huge mistake.

 

He _repeats_ it.

 

“Get _married?_ ”

 

Tessa laughs and the audience starts screaming at an unprecedented volume, and he shakes his head as it dawns on him that he has, without a doubt, played himself.

 

As the screams get louder and louder, he skates around in tiny circles, looking at the ice, considering his options. He could make a run for it, but the tunnel is too far away, and they’d definitely stop him. He sweeps the ice with his blade, wondering if it’s possible for him to carve a hole in it and disappear. From the corner of his eye, he can see that Tessa is tucking her hair behind her ear, which is her obvious tell for when she’s nervous. He wants to apologize to her, because it’s _his_ fault they’re in this awkward situation, and she probably wants to run away from this rink just as much as he does.

 

But apologizing would require looking at her in the eye, and he can’t bring himself to do that yet. Because what if he looks at her and sees panic in her eyes at a mere joke about marriage? What if she freezes and shuts him out and things get weird and tense between them? She’s been so close to him these last few days, so open with her feelings and her affection, and he doesn’t want this bliss to be affected by this random incident.

 

He sees her crouch, but he doesn’t really process it his in mind. He extends a hand to help her, because that’s what he _does_ , when the words she just said register in his brain.

 

“You want me to do this?”

 

She is down on one knee. Faking a _proposal_. To _him_.

 

His hand is grabbing hers, and she stands up smiling like a lunatic, and the screams that couldn’t possibly get any louder just did, but he is… not there.

 

He is in a different plane of existence.

 

His soul has _actually_ left his body, and it isn’t coming back.

 

He has fucking _ascended_.

 

“Oh my God,” he hears the person formerly known as Scott say. “This has happened in my dreams before, I think.”

 

It’s a really funny joke, ha ha, except he _has_ dreamt about this.

 

Why why why why _why_ is he telling thousands of people that he’s dreamt about this?

 

The screams are so loud that he slowly regains control of his body, and that’s when it fully hits him that this actually happened, and now he is _really_ about to die.

 

He feels like his head and his neck and his chest are on fucking fire, and he feels like he is about to combust, on the spot. He’s going to actually be _on fire_ , any second now.

 

“Throw it back to them,” says Tessa and he fights, tooth and nail, to recover.

 

“Okay, so, anything else?” he says, and for a few seconds nobody says anything, and he thinks that the people in the audience witnessed his near-death experience and decided to take pity on him. But then, of course, he hears a section full of girls chant _kiss kiss kiss_.

 

And, yeah. Knowing how he is, he can’t really fault them for trying.

 

Suddenly, a beacon of hope and salvation appears in front of him: a cute little girl at the floor seats is looking at him with stars in her eyes. He suppresses the urge to throw his fist in the air in victory.

 

Kids _love_ him.

 

He’ll live to see another day.

 

*

 

A while later, his mother and Kate come into the arena’s dressing rooms, beaming with pride and happiness.

 

“That was magical, Scotty,” his mother says, and for a moment he isn’t sure if she means the skating or the fake proposal. But then she turns to Tessa, hugs her tightly and says, “You were so amazing, honey. They were lucky to see you perform.”

 

Scott is finishing packing his bag while Tessa and their moms are discussing their favorite routines from tonight, and he sneaks a glance towards them. Tessa isn’t looking at him, but _Kate_ is, with an inquisitive look on her face. He’s known her almost his entire life, but the way she seems to scan him now, it’s like she’s seeing him for the first time. Then her expression changes, she breaks into a warm smile, and she rejoins the conversation.

 

Kate got here in Tessa’s car, she explains, and Alma will give her a ride back home, and Scott and Tessa can drive back to London whenever they’re done here, and they’ll all do dinner together tomorrow. Scott has the peculiar feeling that they are up to something, but before he can react his mother gives him a kiss on the cheek, tells him to drop by the house tomorrow for breakfast, and leaves with Kate.

 

A few minutes later, he’s on the road with Tessa, who is yawning in the passenger seat when he decides to finally say it.

 

“Thank you.”

 

“For what?”

 

“For saving my ass back there, and making sure I didn’t die, basically.”

 

“You wouldn’t have died, don’t be dramatic,” she laughs. “You might have fainted, at most.”

 

He chuckles. “You know what I mean, though. It couldn’t have been easy.”

 

It wouldn’t be easy for anyone, and much less for Tessa. He knows her, and the Tessa from eight or six or three years ago wouldn’t have been able to handle a public situation so expertly, and make such a well-timed joke to diffuse the awkwardness. But the Tessa from today saw him at a complete loss for words and with only a few seconds to gather her courage, she came to his rescue.

 

He loves her _so much._

 

“You’re welcome,” she says. “A dream come true, right?” she teases.

 

He did say that, didn’t he? And yeah, it _has_ happened in his dreams.

 

Sometimes it’s her proposing to him, and sometimes he’s the one to take the leap.

 

It’s actually a dream-like scene that plays out in his mind a lot, even when he’s wide awake.

 

It played out on a drive through Switzerland years ago, when she sang along to Celine Dion in French and got most of the words wrong and he thought to himself _I want you forever_. It played out one morning last December, when she opened a new Cheerios box and celebrated with a triumphant yell because _this is when they’re the crunchiest, Scott._ It played out on a podium in South Korea, as she looked at him, trying to wipe away tears that wouldn’t stop coming. And it played out three days ago in a jewelry store in Toronto, while Patrick rattled off the pros of rough cut diamonds, and his heart seized as he opened the box in his hands and thought _this is the one_.

 

He won’t tell her about that just yet. But it won’t be too much longer now.

 

And so he says, “Well, in the list of my reoccurring dreams, it’s there. Along with other classics, like being naked in front of that Russian judge, messing up the step sequence in _Hip Hip Chin Chin_ , being yelled at by Marina in front of the cameras-“

 

“Oooh I get that one too!” she interjects excitedly.

 

“How long are her bangs in your version?”

 

“Scott, her bangs are literally always the same.”

 

“But in _my_ dream they go down to her eyes!”

 

“Seriously?”

 

“Yeah, they totally make her look younger.”

 

“You should tell her that next time we see her.”

 

They giggle and she reaches out to hold his hand over the console. She must be really tired because she falls asleep shortly afterwards, only squirming in her seat when he parks outside her house in London and turns off the engine.

 

“Home?” she mumbles.

 

“Yep, we’re home,” he replies. “Wake up, baby.”

 

“Nooooo,” she whines in a sleepy voice. “Can’t.”

 

Monosyllabic sentences is how he knows she really isn’t gonna be awake enough to walk home. He gets out of the car, goes around to her side and picks her up, one arm around her back, the other below her knees. She burrows her head in his neck, and off they go.

 

He reaches the entrance of her house, and with an expert manoeuvre he takes out his keys, unlocks the door and lets them both in. And then, it suddenly hits him.

 

He just carried her in, bridal style.

 

On _this_ day, of all days.

 

He starts laughing, right there in the doorway, and she stirs in his arms.

 

“What’s so funny?” she whispers. He presses a soft kiss to her forehead.

 

“I was just thinking of this crazy dream I had,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> you might think i'm the sappiest sap ever, but have you MET scott patrick moir?
> 
> comments are love!
> 
> come talk to me on twitter @ultravoxing if you feel inclined to do so :)


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